1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the practice of creating music with a musical instrument or voice and to the feedback given to the performer, and, more particularly, to a method for giving feedback on the proficiency of a performance of standard musical exercises.
2. Description of the Background
It is important for a performer to be given feedback when trying to perfect the creation of music in order to understand which aspects of the performance should be altered in order to improve the performance. In most cases this feedback is only given by the teacher during lessons and at all other times the performer must provide their own feedback. This requires both discipline and skill which are not always present. In order to overcome this several devices are available. One approach is to record the desired performance so the performer can compare their own performance with the desired performance by playing the desired performance and listening to their own performance to compare and contrast the two or by trying to play along with the desired performance. Another approach is to use a system where the musician's performance is captured and compared to a stored desired performance and feedback is given to the performer on the goodness of the match. Both of these approaches have disadvantages. A disadvantage of the first approach of relying on the performer to compare their performance to a prerecorded performance is that it is difficult for the performer to compare their performance objectively to the desired performance. The accuracy of the comparison is likely to be less stringent by the musician that has less experience and therefore needs more accurate feedback. A disadvantage of the second approach is that the performer is constrained to perform sufficiently closely to the stored desired performance in order for the feedback to be meaningful. A significant amount of practice must already have been completed to attain this level of competence. For more complicated musical compositions it is prohibitively difficult to compare a performance below a certain standard to the desired performance due to the lack of correlation between the captured performance and the desired performance to which it is compared. U.S. Pat. No. 5,521,323, issued May 28, 1996, to Paulson et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,913,259, issued Jun. 15, 1999 to Grubb et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 7,323,629, issued Jan. 29, 2008 to Somani et al. all describe methods for matching a performance to a stored musical score and giving feedback to the performer on the match between their performance and the stored score. All require a high amount of correlation in the captured performance for them to be effective and feedback can only be given against the stored desired performance.
However this limitation is able to be relaxed when standard musical exercises such as scales and arpeggios are considered. The ability to accurately perform musical exercises is fundamental to the creation of music and the importance of such exercises is recognized by bodies that award certificates for musical competence, such as The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM), by the inclusion of such exercises in their practical examinations. It is therefore acknowledged to be advantageous for improving musical proficiency to be able to perform standard musical exercises as well as to be able to perform prescribed musical compositions. Due to this the incentive to help performers improve their execution of these exercises has led to the introduction of products operating on the principles mentioned above. For example, Yvonne Behar has a web site called ‘Scales and Arpeggios with Confidence’™, www.saawithconfidence.com, where she sells CDs that demonstrate the desired performance of these exercises on the piano along with recorded comments on technique. Similarly, a company called Makemusic® Inc sells a product called Smartmusic® that compares a captured performance with a desired performance and gives feedback. Both of these products suffer from the disadvantages outlined above. U.S. Pat. No. 6,417,435, issued Jul. 9, 2002, to Chantzis et al describes a device for testing the audio-acoustic proficiency of a performer performing standard musical exercises. However this device also has the limitation that the performer must choose aspects of the exercise, such as a targeted tempo, so that the device can choose a desired performance against which to compare the execution of the musical exercise. As in the other examples, the performance must be close to the chosen exercise parameters to ensure meaningful feedback.
There are also devices offered that allow a performer to check specific aspects of their performance such as intonation. U.S. Pat. No. 7,504,575, issued Mar. 17, 2009, to Schwartz describes a device capable of training a musician to improve their intonation by giving them feedback on the frequency of the note being produced. Similarly an application called Tartini produced by Philip McLeod et al. at the University of Otago, www.tartini.net, gives feedback on intonation by displaying the frequency contours of the sound being produced by the performer. While neither system requires a stored composition to give the feedback in both of these cases the performer is required to drive the training themselves in that they must deliberately solicit feedback from the training system on a particular aspect that they wish to improve. Similarly, the aforementioned U.S. Pat. No. 7,323,629, issued Jan. 29, 2008 to Somani et al. has a mode where it uses the techniques used to analyze and compare a received input to a desired performance to merely display what is being received. However, Somani et al. only teaches how to provide feedback to the performer when the performance is compared to a stored desired performance. In the mode where the input is merely displayed the performer is required to drive the training themselves.
What is needed is a system that offers feedback to the performer on their performance of a standard musical exercise without the need to compare the performance to a stored desired performance. The performer is then able to perform a standard musical exercise and receive objective feedback without understanding the particular aspect of their performance that they need to improve and without having to perform the musical exercise to a high level of competence in order to solicit meaningful feedback.